Our Cornerstone Document

When's the last time you read our nation's Declaration of Independence? Have you read it at all? I'm not sure I read it in school, not even in college where I majored in American History, at least not all of it. I would hope that we are all intimately familiar with the first sentence of the second paragraph and many of us remember reading all of that paragraph at one point. But when was the last time you read any of it?

Personally, it wasn't until the Clinton administration that my interest in America's history grew into a genuine concern about her future. It was then that I really began to look at our history in regards to where we stand today in being faithful to the concepts upon which this great nation was founded. Since that time, I've read and reread the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and other key documents from the founding our our nation.

In my studies, I've come to a deep respect for the fundamental importance of the Declaration of Independence. No other document better reflects what this country is supposed to be about and what I intend, as stated, to focus on in this blog. Therefore, I find it only fitting that I begin this blog site with the great document:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Our Declaration of Independence continues with a list of our Founders greviences. To read it in its entirity, go to http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm